Farfel

There's just been one normal day this whole chag (i.e. that wasn't Shabbas/Yuntif or erev thereof) so we're going ga-ga. As such, I'd just like to say how much I like the word Farfel. Farfel farfel farfel.

The Pre-Pesach Matzah Ban

According to custom, we're not allowed to eat Matzah 30 days before Seder night. The stated rationale for the minhag is that we're to abstain from Matzah so we can eat it at the Seder with gusto. I used to think that this was Rabbinically enjoined cognitive dissonance - i.e. everyone knows that Matzah is terrible, so by telling us we can't 'spoil our appetite' we're to think that Matzah is actually decent food.

Then I got to thinking about what makes transitioning to a Hametz-Free house ("making Pesach" as I now call it) so hard. And, at least for me, it's the delicate balance of eating Hametz while the whole house has to be cleaned for Pesach - and that it would be so much easier to prepare for Pesach if I could just eat Matzah for the few days beforehand...

Then I realized with a bolt outa the blue why my Rabbinic brothers invented this minhag! If we were allowed to eat Matzah before Pesach then my wife, and doubtless every homemaker since Eishet Rashi, would have converted the whole house to Pesadik a week ago! Why not? It's almost logical in a humra sense - two weeks of Pesach instead of one.

This minhag allows me to eat my pop-tarts today. Thank you unnamed rabbis!

Pic from here.

Purim Roundup

A few thoughts on the after-eve of Purim:

1. Recall last year's point about Quentin Tarantino's Purim-Shpiel. This year both my wife and I couldn't get the idea out of our heads while listening to the Megillah - and that's how the text should be read. I will write this up to a greater extent but it's a subtle razor's edge.
   
   
2. We had the whole family over for the Seudah in our home (i.e. my parents + my brother and his kids) for the first time (we were together at shul seudahs before) and that's the way I like it. Wow, it's so much better. In future years, I look forward to the kids putting on skits.
   
   
3. Sam Adams' Beer, even their Light Beer (which I drank this year) is really durn good!
   
   
4. A sign of creeping assimilation, even amongst Orthodox Jews, is the identification of "Shlach-Manos" (the Yiddish form of Mishloach Manot... you can't really say "shlach-manot") as goyishe-style gift giving. It ain't. It's food. Two people I know gave me a note saying that they have given a donation in my honor to their favorite charity instead of giving me ShM. This may work for Xmas, Chanukah, or Festivus, but it's a totally ignorant way to deal with ShM. For two reasons.
   
   
   1. First of all, as my man Seinfeld also understood, giving to your own favorite charity is not a "gift" for another person. I guess it's striking out against materialism... but is it so bad to give people a plastic bag with some almonds and Hershey's Kisses? Moralists and Anthropologists have been through this: giving gifts are meant to be a sacrifice of yourself to bind yourself with another (cf. the korban olah). That's the meaning of generosity. If you invite someone to your home for dinner and say (with self-righteousness) that you have no food for them because, instead, the value of the food and entertainment was given to your favorite charity, Save the Spotted Sea Slug, then you have not been hospitable. You may have done a totally different mitzvah - charity - but you have simultaneously NOT done (in fact probably violated) the mitzvah of hospitality. It's unseemly, and actually not very generous, to commit an aveira on someone else's terms.
      
      
   2. What's really ignorant is that there's a whole other mitzvah to do on Purim which can fit this anti-materialistic/self-righteous impulse: it's called matanot l'evyonim. It's actually way more important mitzvah, and pretty hard to do, than ShM. If these people sent me the same card but saying that they gave MLE in my name then I'd feel much better about it.
   
   

5. There's an odd phenomenon, noticed by my wife about Israelis in the US (parents of our kids' friends) who don't seem to celebrate Purim. I've noticed secular Jews ignore the holiday as well. My first reaction was: how could anyone not like Purim?! It's the day to legally/religiously eat junk food, get drunk, have fun at parties, dress in costume, mock your leaders, and learn Tanakh! It's the best day ever. So, yeah, after expressing that, I realized that all that greatness applies mainly to those who are religiously repressed for most of the year (it's one reason why people have applied Purim to Simchat Torah, because unlike other chagim, we have only 1 day of Purim - or as my rebbe in Hamivtar said, "you know Israel is better than Golus because in America you have two days of Pesach and one day of Purim and in Israel there's two days of Purim and one day of Pesach.")
   
   While it's possible that the secular Jews who scorn/ignore Purim are actually reacting to the messages of Purim - which is pretty anti-Zionist, anti-Diaspora, and anti-Secular - I don't think it's that deep. I think that secular Jews already celebrate Halloween, Mardi Gras, Saint Patricks, and - especially in free countries without state-sanctioned antisemitism - feel no need to have a Bakhtinian carnival. As such, I can make a dictum that the more secular the Jew, the more distant they are from Purim.
   
   And, true to the genius of the Megillah, is precisely the message of the book.

First pic from here of the Esther fresco from the Dura Europos Synagogue. Second pic from here.

Erev Rosh Hashanah Prize

Most of the shomrei Shabbat teachers, including professors, that I know have a subtextual contest with each other about who has a worse holiday teaching season. Because Labor Day was Monday, and Erev Rosh Hashanah is today, most schools started this week and the schedules have forced tzorris, schpilkis, and agita among the whole profession. I was present at a one-upsmanship session where I was able to present the winner of the worst teaching schedule prize, won by me by proxy for my wife:

My wife's first day of teaching is *today* and she's teaching until 5:00 pm.

Please, please, hold your applause. But send help.

Pic from here.

Top 5 Reasons to Make Aliyah

5. The dream of 2000 years has finally been fulfilled

4. Married to a Gush guy

3. Pesky Cossaks

2. Am a Jew born in any country besides Israel or U.S.

1. Want to avoid three-day yuntif

Happy 62nd Birthday Israel!

Today's the 62nd birthday (docheh) of Israel, Yom Ha'Atzmaut. Yay.

Every year, I need to revisit the halakhic question, especially when the holiday is docheh (pushed off from its official date), of whether Hallel should be said with a bracha, without a bracha, or if we should say tachanun.

There's strong arguments about the first two (the latter is reserved for cheresh, shoteh or katan - deaf = ignoring the crucial miracle reveals flawed senses, crazy = blinded by twisted ideology, or childlike = too young to realize how earth-shaking the establishment of Israel was).

The best argument for not saying a bracha is that the miracle of YHA was incomplete. I.e. a war started immediately after the declaration of independence and that war has not stopped. This means that the halakhic appropriateness of a bracha is based on an empirical judgment: was the establishment of Israel a big enough miracle to say Hallel (similar to Purim and Hanukkah) for all of Jewry.

This past year I've been doing extensive reading about Zionism and especially anti-Zionism. And I've gotten a new appreciation for the massive miracle of the State of Israel - and how precarious a State it is. I believe Hallel with a bracha I feel a need to express my gratitude not only for the reality warping, dry bones resurrection, miracle of Israel but also for God's continuing miracle of Israel's preservation.

Israel should not, based on rules of Nature and Humanity, have been established in 1948 and should not - nuclear weapons aside - continue to exist. To paraphrase Darth Vader:"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed [nukes]. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force [Hashem]."

Maybe it's my work this semester in liturgy, TAing for Professor Reuven Kimelman. Liturgy uses physical triggers to remind us of theological truths; we use the sun rising to remind us of Creation, and thus bless the God of Creation. We use the reminder of the Exodus to remind us that God is the One Who Redeems. And in Shemona Esrei we use rain to remind us of the resurrection of the dead.

In 1945 Jews were still being rounded up and murdered all over the world. In 1946, 1947 the survivors were living in DP camps and being barred from entry into Israel. In 1948, the dream of 2000 years was fulfilled, a phoenix rising from the ashes, to provide our halakhic homeland and a worldwide protection for Jews. This is modern History's greatest miracle.

Glorious Purimshpiel

I saw the most excellent film, Inglorious Basterds, earlier, but rather than wait for all my ideas to coalesce around it I just want to say, on this Purim day, that the movie works perfectly as a Purimshpiel. It's possibly the most gloriously violent (and sadly fictional) destruction of Amalek by Jews ever shown on film.

Pic from here of the awesome Bear Jew.

Groundhog Day Alert

The official song of Groundhog Day: I Got You Babe (played over and over and over)



By the way, you heard it here first (unless I mentioned it last year) that Groundhog Day and Tu B'Shvat carry the same meaning: that each day is 6 weeks before spring. Pigday if the pig sees (and/or doesn't see) his shadow, and Tu B'shvat can be either 6 weeks before the start of Spring - defined as Rosh Chodesh Nisan - or 10 weeks (in a leap year)

Another Reason to Be Happy to Be a Hebrew

Around the X-mas season, I see the stress and pressure people have to buy personally-specific disposable consumer items for every acquaintance who they don't want to anger. And they write mass-Xmas messages about their whole family, with pictures, and then send those (or similar cards) to everyone they know. If they do neither, they will also incur wrath. Then they need to get together with the whole family in the depth of winter. There's a much higher suicide rate at this time of year as a result of all this family induced, 'friend' emphasized pressure.

What interesting is not that they have these things and we Hebrews don't. We have them all too except (a) spread out over the year, and (b) much less impact, (c) much less selfish/wasteful.

#x = XMAS
#j = JEWISH EQUIVALENT

The Comparison

1x. Xmas Trees = wrestling with a stinky, sticky foliage; bringing it indoors and letting it shed needles all over; decorating the tree with lights and fragile items; waiting for weeks after the holiday to take it down.

1J. Sukkot - here the foliage structure is outdoors and in the rainy cold autumn. It's the closest that a Jew feels 'goyish' insofar that we all have to build something; the annual visit to Home Depot is the most goyish thing I do all year. The same decorations used for Thanksgiving (fruit, gourds) & Xmas (lights, tinsel, santa clauses inked in black) are used for the Sukkah. There's also indoor foliage - the arba minim - but the smells of that - Etrog, Hadas - are usually good (except if you left your lulav in its holder from last year - that's a bad stink). Same danger of being stuck although Xmas trees give lighter wounds than the ornery palm fronds.

2x. Gift giving to every person you know, which involves an enormous expenditure as well as the stress of trying to think of non-insulting gifts (something they like? something they won't hate? something that they can't use against me in armed combat?), and the stress of making sure that everyone is remembered.

2J. No one-time equivalent. Each component is present thusly:

1. Gift giving = barely on Hanukkah, and only for the more secularly inclined.
   
   
2. Enormous expenditure = Passover is the closest equivalent, either for food & cleaning or for taking the whole family away to a Pesach resort. But here the spending is focused on practical matters (well, I think going away for Pesach is baal tashchit, but whatever) - i.e. food and entertaining. OK, after Pesach, when you have thirteen leftover boxes of Celery Flavored Crispy-Os, it feels like a waste of money - but how would you have known that little Mendele would hate the cereal (he liked it last year!). But that pales in comparison to buying singing fish to your 13 co-workers.
   
   
3. Making sure you remember everyone or they'll hate you = isolated for major/minor simchas. It's the same stress, I believe, but instead of every year, it's only for the bar/bat mitzvahs and weddings (and, yeah, if you're very frum that could be every year, but whatever).

3x. Sending Xmas cards with updates to everyone (or they'll hate you)

3j. People do this around the "high holidays" but (a) it's also, I think, more for the secularly inclined, (b) mainly women to women, (c) and not everyone does it - it's totally not expected.

4x. Whole Family congregating - creating strife for all involved (and the suicide watch for those without family)

4j. Ironically the only thing that comes close is Thanksgiving. Because all the other holidays have an issur melakha which means that not everyone can come at once. I guess the simchas could be the other equivalent (see above).

So, as you can see, while we do have the negatives of this holiday, the stress and expense is spread out over time.

As for the positives? Well, I'm on record that every positive associated with the celebration of Xmas (holding aside the weird virgin birth mythology) can be found better and more frequently on an ordinary frum Shabbas.

What do people like about Xmas? (1) family getting together, (2) big meal, (3) presents, (4) Xmas carols, (5) Xmas decorations/lights

And Shabbas, every Shabbas: (1) family meal together, (2) cholent, (3) no specific gift giving but many people make extra special things for Shabbas, whether it's flowers, special jewelry, etc. In our house it's Shabbas cereal and gleeder; (4) zemirot, (5) neirot, clean linens, the good silverware.

Pic from here.

Meaningful vs. Easy Fast

When did it become both vogue to say "meaningful fast" and assur to say "easy fast." The Hebrew phrase "Tzom Kal" (easy fast) is an idiom, I have no idea what 'meaningful fast' would be in halakhic language.

And that's the signal right there: 'easy' is something one halakhic person says to another; 'meaningful' is new-age spiritual nonsense. You have my permission to say 'easy fast.'

Rabbi Akiva and his students

Recently, I commented on this this fellow's blog; his entry was:

Posted by Larry Lennhoff at 9:15 AM, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 A quick thought about Rabbi Akiva. It is out of season I know, but it occurred to me that 1000 pairs (couples?) of students died for each additional year Rabbi Akiva stayed away after from Rachel after he became a Talmid Chacham.

My response:

Hi Larry,

Just floated to your blog after seeing a comment you made on Hirhurim.

I gave a drasha on this topic. I think the answer to your question is seen in the Aggadata (TB Nedarim 50a) - when Rabbi Akiva returned after 14 years with his 24000 students, they repudiated Akiva's wife: "So she went to see him, but the disciples wished to repulse her. ‘Make way for her,’ he told them, ‘for my [learning] and yours are hers.’"(translation Soncino)

Hence I think the Gemara is telling us that the nature of the students' sin was related to Akiva's absence from his wife.

See this article for some more sources. Just to expand on the point I made in the Drasha: the fact that the original students - i.e. the ones who died - didn't get to see their Rosh Yeshiva in a human, loving, normal family relationship, they grew to believe that their Torah knowledge was more important than human relations. The fact that they would brush a woman aside - to treat her with disrespect - can be extrapolated to how they must have treated each other.

{2009 Update: Pic of Hadrian and Rabbi Akiva from here.}

Life in the Styx, vol. IV, no. 09 (Old Styx)

Hello out there in the Styx,

CONTENTS

1. CONGRATULATIONS
2. HESPED FOR RAV TWERSKY
3. YOM KIPPUR AT PRINCETON

CONGRATULATIONS

To Moshe David Simon whose article about Megillat Esther FINALLY came out in Tradition magazine (vol. 31, no. 4 Summer 1997, pp. 5-27).  The article is entitled , "'Many Thoughts in the Heart of Man...' Irony and Theology in the Book of Esther," (working title: 1001 Recipes with Maple Syrup). If you ask nicely, I'm sure Moshe will autograph your copy.

RAV ISADORE TWERSKY zt'l

Someone of Rav Twersky's stature deserves an adequate hesped (eulogy), and I am not one to give it.  He held a special importance for the Boston community of which I have very little contact.  But, being the son-in-law of The Rav Zt'l, I recognize that Rav Twersky had an effect on my community and my definition of Judaism even if for me it was indirect.

Rav Twersky's passing heralds the departure of an era when there were those who triumphantly embodied the synergies of the synthesis of the Torah and secular worlds.  Torah U-Madda is more than just a cheesy slogan for me (and more than a job I now hold), I believe in its possibility to be the height of Torah existence.  It is not a compromise but a confrontation, a struggle towards the complex goals that God intends us to achieve.

Rav Twersky and his generation were able to both understand and attain those goals in a manner that I fear my generation may not, at least in America.  Although I am a committed Zionist, and believe that the only future for Jews is in Israel, I have also thrown my lot in the American community for now, and I fear for the vacuum of leadership here.

Rav Twersky was also a pre-eminent academician as well as a premium talmud-hakham, a shul rebbe and dynastic rebbe.  His students are the leaders of my generation in the academic world.  The conception of being a 'frum professor' was made possible by Rav Twersky.  He may even have been the first.

I am going to be in Harvard for the last days of Sukkot and I am cowed by what condition I expect the community to be in.  I also feel sorry for Rav Twersky's aveilim (mourners).  The Jewish mourning practices contain a proper wisdom in the necessity for both an intense mourning period that gradually lessens over time in stages (1 day - 7 days - 30 days - 11 months).

However, an intervening yom-tov will obviate the rest of shiva (7 days) by counting as 7 full days of mourning.  Since the burial was on Monday, the family will be able to mourn Tuesday and Wednesday before Sukkot starts.  Then they will lose 7 days because of the 1st day of chag, then 6 more days of Sukkot when they cannot mourn, then another 7 days for Shmini Atzeret, then 1 day for Simchat Torah.  By the time the holidays end, the family will have only 8 days left to even mourn for sheloshim.

I recognize that there is still wisdom in this system, but since I have not seen how it works out, I find that I still extend extra sympathy.

YOM KIPPUR IN OLD NASSAU

I had a blast at Princeton for Yom Kippur.  YK has always been very good at school, but I had never really been able to 'enjoy' it (i.e. use the well-run and well behaved services for good use in personal repentance)
since I would normally have been gabbai-ing at the time.  This time I was the guest "rebbe" and it meant I needed to concentrate on my speeches etc, but it was less minute-by-minute hassle.

[Next paragraph had too many personal names/connections, so the whole paragraph has been redacted]

I gave two drashot, Kol Nidrei and Neila, as well as a shiur on Friday night.  (STANDARD PROMISE, PAY NO HEED) If I get my act together I'll write up my comments.  The shiur, on the Book of Jonah, I thought was so kick-butt that I may try and write that baby up for a journal somewhere (maybe I'll get it printed in a couple o'years after I submit it, see above). [Historical note, as of 2013 none of this has happened, sigh]

What made YK even extra cool was the surprise appearance of an all-star cast of alums.  First there was my brother [name redacted] who knows a good service when he sees it.  But along for the ride was [name redacted] who was representing the Medallin Cartel, wait, no, uh, right, A. D. Little in a job fair on Friday afternoon and swung YK with us.  Even more fortuitous was the appearance of [name redacted] who I hadn't seen for a heckuva long time.

It was a very easy fast (love Joy's cookin') and my legendary allergies were surprisingly docile.  I think this confirms that I am just allergic to Washington Heights.   After YK, Saturday night, I took the opportunity
of great weather to wander around campus and dig up the ol' nostalgia roots.

Whoa Baby did I ever.  I was being smacked with high intensity nostalgia rays all night.  I wandered around Mathey and the Grad College trying to reminisce and maybe slay a few demons (no such luck although I did injure a squirrel).  Since the trip was getting to intense (flashbacks to Tet, Jimi Hendrix wailing in my subconscious) I decided to spend it as a characteristic Princeton evening: I made a 'Wa run for Herr's cheese
popcorn.

They changed the layout in the 'Wa dudes!  I was so confused I almost walked out with some spaghetti-Os cuz, hey, when yer used to buying things in yer sleep you trust your memory of the store layout over any physical appearances (and you certainly can't go by smell in the Wa).

They expanded the deli counter (that night's special: the Fried-Lard Cheesecake Burger.  On a taco) and relocated the Mac machine.  Heathens!

I stayed till the next day in order to have a Yavneh Sunday: davening at 8:30, waiting around till 11:30 in a ravenous torpor, gorging on brunch, and then plundering the Princeton Record Exchange's trove of $3.99 CDs (that last part is my own variation).

[personal data redacted]

Have fun shakin' the lulav!

Styx :]

[Posted Oct 17, 2013]

Life in the Styx, vol. II, no. 39 (Old Styx)

Hello everyone, Chag Sameach

I have been in the treacherous grasp of the nasty black-pig death flu.  Or at least it feels like it.  On the plus side, it has enabled me to get around much of the Pesach cleaning which requires higher computational power (I still need to behave as a pack animal, no dispensation there).  On the rather extensive downside, though, I have not been able to learn very much Torah nor write papers or write email letters -- hence the dearth o' Styxen in the past few days (which should be especially notable considering the heavy doses of sick weirdness which has afflicted the Jewish people.)

I did have some of the heavenly kosher Dunkin Donuts that are in the area, and I have re-read some of my Hunter Thompson stash, so my pleasant temper and equilibrium was restored somewhat; but it is very difficult to operate right now (and I dread the Seders). Anyway, I need to make up for some of the lost time, so...

BAD CRAZINESS

Was I sleeping when they allowed rabbis to act in a publicly disgraceful manner?  I know there's a heter for prime ministers to act like spayed swine but who allowed:

(1) the Agudas ha-Rabbanim trying to make up for all the peace and quiet that has existed for the past few years among the denominations by issuing rancorous statements of low-grade ignorance and thuggery,

and (2) Schorch, chancellor of JTS, in a vain attempt to show how Conservative Jews can be just as legitimate as orthodox Jews by being equally as rancorous and black-hearted taking the infighting all the more public on the front page of the New York Times (last Thursday, 4/17/97).

I'm sure we all feel proud.

It is especially ironic, as we rapidly scurry around in the Annual Pesach Prep Frenzy, the holiday of Jewish nationhood, of family, that we should take this opportunity to blast our fellow Jews with both barrels.  Rov Lamm, in the flaccidly impotent quarter-page ad in the NYT that was intended to counteract the blind bigotry of the Agudas ha-Rabbanim,  stated that in the song "Dayyenu" that we sing at the Seder, we claim that "Had He brought us before Mount Sinai but not given us the Torah, dayyenu -- it would have sufficed us."

But before we resort to puckish homiletics, we can learn "tolerance" just by looking at the Exodus as told through the Haggadah.  That is, the entire holiday of Pesach is about Jewish unity and spiritual equality.

PESACH, SINCERITY, HUMILITY & FEAR

Pesach is more than a holiday where you stuff 5 matzas in yer mouth in 2 seconds to satisfy some myopic shiur of kezayit ("according to modern scientific measurements, which we normally reject except when we need to be holier-than-thou, an olive weighed 35 lbs. and was the size of a woman's bowling ball").  Pesach is a holiday of humility.

We are told (by the Rabbis, go figure) that even though the Jewish people had reached the second lowest level of spiritual contamination possible in Egypt, we were still redeemed.  According to the Mishna, the story we tell at the seder should have the theme of "le-ganai le-shevach" -- from degradation to glory.  We are given two different ways of doing that -- (1) by showing that at one point all the Jewish people were slaves yet Gd redeemed us; or (2) showing that at one point we were all idol worshipers, yet Gd chose us.

The entire *message* of the haggadah is that at one point in life all Jews were spiritually bankrupt -- we were slaves, idol worshipers, "Arami Oved Avi" and all that jazz -- worse than we were ever worse before.  There are many reasons for this message (it shows the bounds of Gd's love; it shows the strength of the Covenant of the Patriarchs;  it shows that the one mitzvah we were given -- the korban Pesach -- was all it took to make us Chosen people again, just like one mitzvah can doom us, like the Garden of Eden).  But an essential message is of Jewish unity and religious humility.

UNITY

Even though this is taken to extremes by many segments, we are bound together as a people and we are responsible for one another as brothers and sisters. At the same time, let's not take Jewish nationhood or unity as the end-zone of all Judaism.  We are not defined by the same rules as an "ethnicity" -- Judaism is a religion, with a Gd, a set of laws, and a covenant.  Any conception of Judaism with fewer characteristics than that is doing the definition a disservice.

We see the direction of "religion as ethnicity" in today's (Monday, 4/21/97) NYT op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman.  I'm on record claiming that Friedman is too arrogant to be taken seriously.  I am surprised, though, that he has revealed himself far more in today's editorial than I ever expected.

He has the audacity to link Netanyahu's scandal to the orthodox drive to remain in control of the Israel rabbinate: "What this religious dispute and the current political scandal involving Mr. Netanyahu have in common is that they are both rooted in a disregard for the balances and red lines necessary to hold Israeli society and world Jewry together."

He shows the same religious insensitivity, in fact the same evil-spirited bigotry, that we all condemn in the Agudas ha-Rabbanim.  The orthodox rabbinate in Israel isn't small minded or foolish for wanting to exclude non-orthodox conversions, marriages, and divorces.  It is a natural outgrowth of orthodox belief to make these institutions definitionally rigid.  To delegitimize the orthodox belief that non-orthodox conversion is invalid is to delegitimize orthodoxy.  Which may be the end goal, but if so then we are in an impasse that can only be broken with recriminations and dirty tactics.

And, the Agudas ha-Rabbanim aside -- since they are not the mainstream voice of orthodoxy, modern or otherwise (only the RCA & the OU can really speak for 'modern', and the 'Agudah' speaks for the Charedim; in fact that was one of the main crimes of the Agudas ha-Rabbanim, they had the hubris to claim they spoke for more people than gave them permission to do so) -- Chancellor Schorch joins with Friedman to delegitimize orthodoxy.

Take President Hertzog, who died earlier this week.  I have mixed feelings about lauding Hertzog as a hero because he was brazenly irreligious while his father was the Chief Rabbi of Israel.  If that isn't a symbol of Israel, I don't know what is.  But I don't *like* that symbol.  I don't like the idea that to be a modern Israeli hero you had to spit in the face of your father and turn your back on Tradition.

But here Friedman says: "Overlooked in all this legal brouhaha was the fact that Israel's former President Chaim Herzog died of a heart attack last week. Or was it a broken heart?"  To take the style of Friedman -- who is well known to role-play and address policy-makers personally in his columns in a vein attempt to be a policy maker himself -- "Yo Tommy!  Cheap sentimentalism and moral bankruptcy don't play well compared to the rest of your career!"

What's the broken heart?  Because, Friedman intimates, the state he built was being torn apart by the "desert of moral and spiritual leadership."  This sounds very similar to Schorch's claim that we need a "piety with sanity" -- as opposed to the orthodox in Israel.

HUMILITY

This brings us to the second message of the Haggadah: humility.  We need far more humility in Judaism today.  We need people to stop believing that they can hold a press conference and wave Jewish dirty laundry to the rest of the world.  We need the superlatively arrogant Prime Minister Netanyahu to start being competent instead of being pompous.  But most impotently we need religious humility.  And that is the core of the haggadah.

We all began as scum.  As idol worshipers and slaves.  Every one of us.  Therefore we cannot look to our fellow Jew and say that he or she is worse than we are.  (Note: some have called the trait of religious arrogance as "religious triumphalism" -- I find that buzzword so repugnant that I swear I'll never use it seriously (I may use it when a conversation has degraded to buzzword-level, but at that point our souls have been bought & sold on the open market, so asinine buzzwords would be the least of my worries)).

But humility is the key to understand part of the religious dispute within orthodoxy.  Liberal Orthodoxy, let's say in the issue of women's minyans, claims that it is 'sincere.'  And if someone is sincere, then that is the highest level a person can reach, right?

The problem is that sincerity is a cheap emotion because all 'sincere' means is that you are pure in your belief.  But if the belief is an incorrect one, then the sincerity is negligible.  What the frummies are claiming is that the Liberals don't possess enough "yirat-shamayim" -- fear of Gd, and fear of sin.  Rather liberals are sincere in being liberal; in wanting personal autonomy over religious authority, of have rabbinic will equal a halachic way (and all the rest of the triumphalist buzzwords).

But Liberal Jews logically respond, consciously or sub-consciously, that if what they see frummie-jews do is considered 'yirat-shamayim' then they want nothing of it.  Because 'yirat-shamayim' -- following the law to the utmost detail -- is often just a cover for aggressive, holier-than-thou, arrogance and pettiness.  I demand that my vegetables be checked with a Lakewood Super-Soaker 3000 not because I'm really worried about the bugs, but because I want to show that I am closer to Gd than you are.

And I can't say that both sides are wrong in their characterization of the other.  Nor can I say that the stereotypes are true.  We cannot afford to be naïve (everyone is a wonderful swingin' cat), nor cynical (everyone is out for rank and base desires).  We must be humble.  Humility means honesty -- honest in your beliefs and honest in your assessment of others.   And when you are humble, even though it means you may still, eventually condemn another person's practice -- you will be so busy criticizing your own shortcomings, you won't have time for anyone else.

Remember, the haggadah teaches us that:

(1) we are saved only when we do sincere actions directed purely towards Gd, no matter how small (like taking the Korban Pesach and sprinkling the doorposts), and

(2) no Jew can feel arrogant in being Jewish because at one point we were all the lowest of the low.

Ach!  Enough ranting before the holiday.  The above is ill-formed and filled with the combined frustration of the current evil state of affairs that we are bringing on ourselves as a people with the personal frustration of being consumed by this black-pig flu.  Maybe during chol-ha-moed I can make up for this bile and recrimination by writing down some more torah (there is a dvar-torah wrapped up in the above screed if you look closely).

Have a chag kasher ve-sameach.
And remember, only you can prevent forest fires.  Only you.

Styx :]

[Posted on Oct 17, 2013]